Lot of events coming up:
June 12-
Little Rock Arkansas. The Mosaic Templars Cultural Center is hosting a series of panel discussions takking an historical look at education for African Americans in the state of Arkansas. A series of interesting panels from the Rosenwald Schools, to the 1 Room School houses, to the church affiliated schools, such as St. Mary’s AME, Immanuel School which was a Baptist School and even a Presbyeterian school for black children in Pocahantas Arkansas. The workshop is free, but registration is required. To register, email Linda McDowell, Arkansas History Commission, or call 501.682.6900.

On Jun 12, 2010 The Muscogee Creek Indian Freedmen will have an information booth at the Africa West festival from 9:00am-6:00pm. The association will have a display of photos of African Creek families and Prominent African Creek leaders. The President of the Association will also present on the history and culture of the African Creeks at 12:30 pm at the Amphitheater during the history segment of the festival.

JUNETEENTH! June 19th
Well next week, Juneteenth is breaking out all over!! Lots of events taking place nationwide. Some genealogy events as well.
Note that the Prince George’s County chapter of AAHGS (The Afri. American Historical & Genealogical Society) is hosting its annual Juneteenth event. This is an all day free genealogy symposium. This is a great event, with good workshops and a free lunch as well.

The New England AAHGS Chapter will hold it’s June meeting on at the NARA facility on Trapelo Rd. in Waltham Mass. The meeting will be from 11-2 pm. The facility is opening specifically for AAHGS members. After the meeting (and before it), participants can use NARA’s records to continue researching their families until closing.

The North Carolina Piedmont chapter of AAHGS is holding its own research trip to the NC State Archives in Raleigh. This is an all day research trip to the archives and members will depart at 7:30 am for a full day of research.

In Little Rock Arkansa, on June 19th, The Mosaic Templars Cultural Center in partnership with Respect for Life Radio will host a Juneteenth celebration with music and film Saturday, June 19, 2010. The event is free. The music and film workshops will be held from 10a.m.-12 p.m. Film screenings will take place 12-5p.m in the MTCC auditorium. The featured documentary will be Wattstax, the dynamic film of the 1972 Los Angeles music festival billed as the “black Woodstock.”

I will be making a video about examination of documents and the need to analyze what you see when using indexes and original documents. A discussion took place in our lunch time chats about an error made when an index was produced. The discussion was whether a community in So. Carolina had an unusually high number of women and children all born in Nova Scotia, because the document had the letters “NS” written upon it. A person creating an index thought that the letters represented Nova Scotia. It was noted that this was most likely an error on the part of the person creating an index. Logic, in this case had to be applied—in other words, the likelihood of an entire community having all wives and children having been born in Canada while all of the husbands were born in So. Carolina would not be likely. The fact is—many people do not know what they are looking at when seeing the official record—-that is many times, NOT what the enumerator used to collect the data. Enumerator’s notations and the official census records that we see, are often not the same thing. We use for census records the data written by census tabulators. In the case of the mysterious community of women and children from Nova Scotia—the document was actually reflecting the fact that the census enumerator–did not state the birthplace of the wives and children—thus—-“Not Stated” was put on the form, and this was not an abbreviation for Nova Scotia. How we analyze the records that we have are just as important as the story that we tell.

Well, thanks for listening to this week’s podcast. I appreciate you for your time, and wish you a great week of researching and documentation.

Until next time, keep doing what you do.
Keep researching, keep documenting, and please keep sharing what you find.

Meta

About Me

Author of "Black Indian Genealogy Research", Member of AAHGS -Afro-American Historical & Gennealogical Society, Founding member of AfriGeneas, Faculty for Samford IGHR, and MAAGI -Midwest African American Genealogy Institute, PAAC-Preservation of African American Cemeteries